Hi All,So I have some Avid Elixir 1s which came with my 29er at the moment, which are a bit pants. The rear brake is acceptable -if I can lock the wheel easily why do I need a stronger brake right? The front brake is particularly bad though - likely needs bleeding... But instead of spending £25 on an avid bleeding kit, I thought I might be better putting the money towards some new brakes. I'm fairly set on some shimano brakes, given their rep for being reliable, and I had some Deore brakes on my old bike - for reference on a flat road I could pretty easily go over the bars if I grabbed a lot of front brake.

So with a budget of around £100, I can either afford to just replace the front brake with something like SLX or XT, and replace the back brake at a later date, or buy both a front and rear Deore brake.

So the question is, aside from the obvious weight difference, how much better are the XT(M785) (£85) brakes going to be than the Deore brakes? Also, if I go for just the front brake I could get the Deore brakes with a 203mm rotor - presumably that would get me more power too.

From what i understand (and this is not very much i admit) there is little to no difference in braking power and modulation within the Shimano range.I can howeher very much recommend the Shimano offerings! Been on my XTs for a while and never had a problem, you can bleed them with every kind of organic oil aswell.

_________________"Stay cool and try to survive" A. Klier to the other members of the Garmin classics squad the night before P-R.

You can probably fix your front brake by pushing the caliper pucks all the way out and forcing the fluid up the line (hopefully the air too). You might have to do this a couple of times using the lever to push the pucks out again (be sure not to push them out too far) and then installing the brake per the centering instructions. It might not even be air that is the problem. I have had brakes get one puck stuck and doing this procedure has freed it up and then the brakes worked fine going forward. Brake pucks are subjected to lots of crud, mud, dust, etc. and sometimes the seals get a little gunky. Moving the pucks all the way in a few times allows the crud to "fall off the end" and the the pucks move freely.

_________________For certain parts stiffer is more important than lighter.

OK, thanks for the tips. I'll save my pennies and hunt down the deore brakes.

I'm not sure there will be too much of a crap build up on the front brake - haven't had it all that long, which is why I think it needs bleeding - performance is noticeably worse than the rear, even down to the lever feel (goes all the way to the bar if I squeeze hard, but the rear lever is much harder to pull back to the bar).

I'll give it a go as you say though. Might solve the rubbing I get too.

ATM I have 180mm rotors on the front and 160mm on the rear - will there be much difference swapping the front to a 203mm? If I change the brake I'll probably have to buy a new shimano rotor anyway right? For reference, the bike weighs about 12kg and I weigh the best part of 80kg.

There should be a serial number printed on the bottom of the caliper somewhere...Avid had a production run of elixir 1's that had seal issues in both the caliper and lever and theyll warranty them for you if you bring them to your local bike shop. I just did a set for a customer and he ended up getting a nice upgrade out of the deal. The date range of the issues from what i remember is april 2012 to september 2012. check and see if your calipers have a date within that range printed on them.

That what shimano claim. If the brake is new then using shimano oil is fine to keep the warranty the mineral oil used in Citroen's works very well. Obviously in a shop like me Shimano's oil is best as I work on other peoples brakes.

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